U.S. says no policy consequences for Israel despite lack of Gaza aid
A Post analysis based on more than a dozen interviews found Israel has largely failed to comply with U.S. demands, bringing parts of northern Gaza closer to famine.
TEL AVIV — The State Department confirmed Tuesday that Israel will face no policy consequences for the lack of aid reaching the hunger-ravaged Gaza Strip, following a warning last month from the Biden administration that it had 30 days to improve access or potentially lose some U.S. military assistance.
“I certainly don’t have a change in U.S. policy to announce today,” State Department deputy spokesman Vedant Patel said Tuesday, the day the 30-day deadline expired. “We have seen some steps being taken. There need to be some additional steps that are also taken,” he added. “There is nobody in this administration saying that the humanitarian situation in Gaza is pristine … It continues to be a crisis.”
Israel has largely failed to comply with the three main demands of the U.S. letter, according to aid groups and U.N. officials, which included surging humanitarian aid across the enclave, resuming access for commercial trucks and ending the isolation of the north. Humanitarian organizations say the policies have brought the Palestinian enclave to the brink of mass starvation.
“Things are going from bad to worse,” U.N. humanitarian coordinator Muhannad Hadi told The Washington Post on Friday after a trip to Gaza’s besieged north. He described the situation facing civilians as “beyond imagination.”
The warning to Israel was delivered in an Oct. 13 letter from Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin that outlined “concrete measures” they said they expected their Israeli counterparts to implement. Ahead of Tuesday’s deadline, authorities in Israel touted their progress: another crossing into Gaza was opened; a polio vaccination campaign was successfully completed; the number of trucks entering was up from last month’s record low, and a few have reached hospitals in Gaza’s northernmost cities, which Israel has sealed off from nearly all outside assistance for more than a month.
“We responded positively to most of the questions posed to us by the Americans,” an Israeli official said Monday, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.
But a Post analysis based on interviews with more than a dozen humanitarian workers and officials found that Israel has largely failed to comply with the three main demands of the U.S. letter.
The consequences have been dire, with a United Nations-backed panel warning Friday that the entire population of Gaza now faces acute food insecurity. It said that famine is imminent, or may already be unfolding, in parts of the north — which are still home to hundreds of thousands of civilians, nearly half of whom are believed to be children.
On Nov. 4, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told a news conference that Israel had not yet implemented most of the U.S. recommendations. Three days later, he offered a more optimistic assessment: “We have seen Israel take a number of important steps over the past several weeks, including in just the past few days,” Miller said Thursday.
But Stacy Gilbert, a former State Department official, said any action taken by Israel was negligible. “It is absolutely not enough,” said Gilbert, who resigned from the department in May over a hotly disputed report that the Biden administration relied on to justify continuing to send billions of dollars of weapons to Israel.
She was one of the most senior U.S. officials with responsibility over the report but was overruled, which led to her penning a letter to staff saying the State Department was wrong to conclude that Israel had not obstructed humanitarian assistance to Gaza and that she was leaving her job in protest.
“For the State Department to look at these very small drops of water in the ocean and report improvements is patently ridiculous,” she said. “This whole conflict has been a story of Israel promising to do better and not doing better, or making excuses for why they can’t do something.”
After more than a year of war, nearly all of Gaza’s 2.2 million people have been displaced and pushed into shrinking parts of the enclave. They live in squalor in makeshift tents or in the ruins of bombed-out buildings. The health system has effectively collapsed. Israel retains full control over the movement of goods and people into and out of the enclave.
Israel rejects accusations that it is impeding aid access to Gaza and continues to insist that the humanitarian crisis there is exaggerated. “There is no starvation and no famine,” Brig. Gen. Elad Goren, head of the civil department of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), the Israeli agency that oversees the Palestinian territories, told The Post last week.
Israeli officials have repeatedly accused Hamas of stealing and siphoning aid to its fighters but have yet to provide public evidence. They also blame the United Nations for delays in the distribution 0f aid. Aid officials say they are doing their best in what has become the world’s most dangerous place for humanitarian workers.
“We need a safe and stable environment to be able to reach the affected population, and we don’t have that,” Hadi said. “This is the responsibility of Israel” as the occupying power, he said.
U.S. demand #1: ‘Ahead of winter, surge all forms of humanitarian assistance throughout Gaza’
No aid entered northern Gaza from Oct. 1 to 14, the day after the letter was delivered to Israel, and humanitarian officials say there has been little meaningful change in the month since.
Across the enclave, Israel is permitting just over 30 humanitarian trucks into Gaza per day, Philippe Lazzarini, head of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) that aids Palestinian refugees, said Saturday on X. The United Nations counts only trucks whose cargo has been picked up from the Gaza side of the border and taken to distribution centers, which requires Israeli coordination.
Even COGAT’s own count — 58 trucks per day in October, on average — is still a fraction of the 350 daily minimum requested by Washington.
On Tuesday, COGAT announced it had complied with a U.S. request to open a fifth border crossing in Kissufim, near the center of Gaza, though its accessibility remains an open question. While the Biden administration letter demanded that Gaza’s four existing crossings — east and west Erez in the north, Kerem Shalom in the south and the central Gate 96 — be open consistently, only one in the north has generally been available at a time, according to the World Food Program (WFP).
Kerem Shalom remains the primary entry point for humanitarian goods and workers and is beset by insecurity. There are 700 truckloads awaiting pickup on the Palestinian side of the crossing, the Israeli official said Monday.
Border crossing open
Border crossing closed
Erez
Erez
West
Jabalya
Gaza City
Gate 96
ISRAEL
Nuseirat
Deir al-Balah
Kissufim
Al Qarara
Khan
Younis
2 MILES
Rafah
Salah al-Din
gate
Rafah
crossing
EGYPT
Kerem Shalom
Sources: Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, United Nations
An Emirati ship with 150 trucks was docked in the port of Ashdod, the Israeli official added, with another ship on the way. “We want to bring these goods to the northern crossings,” he said.
Even if truck numbers increase significantly in November, aid agencies say the debate over the quantity of trucks and access points obscures a more fundamental truth: Safely picking up and delivering aid to the people who need it most, especially in the north, remains virtually impossible.
In early October, Israel launched a punishing ground operation it said was aimed at preventing Hamas militants from regrouping in Jabalya, Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun, the northernmost parts of Gaza. Meanwhile, airstrikes continue to rain down across the Strip.
The ongoing violence has made it difficult and dangerous for trucks to reach the Israeli crossings; those that do make it through are often pillaged by criminal gangs along the Israeli-designated and -monitored route from Kerem Shalom. Lawlessness began to surge in the spring after Israel targeted members of Gaza’s civil police, part of the Hamas-led government, who had provided protection for aid convoys.
Aid agencies have asked for alternative routes, but the perils persist. Looters have already attacked trucks on a new trial road opened by Israel in late October, said Alia Zaki, a spokeswoman for WFP.
Some U.S. recommendations for surging aid — outlined in a list of bullet points under the letter’s first demand — have been flatly rejected or ignored by Israel. Goren, of COGAT, declined to comment on an American demand to increase the number of vetted humanitarian truck drivers. And he said Israel would continue to bar aid agencies from using closed trucks, which humanitarian workers say are needed to protect against looters and preserve goods.
“As long as the threat exists” of Hamas hiding fighters inside a closed truck, there would be no change, Goren said.
Georgios Petropoulos, the Gaza director for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said the closed trucks pose no threat and that Israel’s rejection of this request and others is part of “a targeted campaign against the United Nations logistics system.”
A humanitarian convoy to the north on Thursday, hailed by Miller as a successful example of food reaching the area, was emblematic of the breakdown in the aid delivery system.
Israeli forces stopped the convoy in Jabalya for two hours, during which time some of the food was “off-loaded by people who surrounded the trucks,” according to WFP. After receiving permission to continue, the convoy was blocked again by Israeli forces, who ordered aid workers to unload the supplies, ensuring they never reached the intended shelters in Beit Hanoun.
COGAT, the Israeli agency, said Saturday that “11 trucks containing food, water and medical equipment” had reached distribution centers for people in Jabalya and Beit Hanoun. It released images of what appeared to be bags of flour being unloaded from one truck in an open sandy area.
Zaki said the area appeared to be an Israeli military zone closed to Palestinians. “It reflects the reality,” she said. “We can receive approval from [COGAT] and then on the ground, the situation is different.”
Washington also demanded in its letter that Israel reverse evacuation orders “when there is no operational need” for them. On Oct. 26, the Israel Defense Forces rescinded an order for a small part of Israel’s self-described “humanitarian zone,” but more than 80 percent of the enclave is still part of the evacuation area, according to the latest U.N. data. Israel said Monday that the “humanitarian zone” had been slightly expanded again, while issuing a new evacuation order for a refugee camp in the north.
With people constantly on the move, hunger and disease spreading and the days getting colder, shelter remains an equally pressing concern. The U.S. letter called for Israel to allow families in Mawasi — where hundreds of thousands of Gazans are crowded into makeshift tents on a barren stretch of beach in the southwest — to “move inland before winter.”
The Gaza Shelter Cluster, which coordinates humanitarian groups working on housing, estimated in September that it would take more than two years to supply basic protective materials, such as tarpaulins and plastic sheeting.
“Since then, the pace of truck arrivals has slowed even further, and the number of people in need, particularly in the north, has risen dramatically,” said Iyad Abu Hamam, the cluster director.
U.S. demand #2: ‘Ensure that the commercial and Jordan Armed Forces corridors are functioning at full and continuous capacity’
By Israel’s own admission, it has not resumed commercial deliveries to Gaza.
The Biden administration called for Israel to allow a daily minimum of 50 to 100 commercial trucks into the enclave — ferrying fresh fruit, vegetables and other commodities that the United Nations does not provide.
But Goren said the movement of commercial trucks has been banned since early October, citing unspecified “security issues.” The Israeli official elaborated Monday, saying, “Hamas took control of the private sector” and “we decided we could not allow a terrorist organization that is holding our hostages to make profits.” The official did not provide evidence for his claim that Hamas was profiting from commercial deliveries.
With no private goods allowed in, prices in Gaza’s few remaining markets have soared again, well beyond the means of destitute families. In the north, a bag of lentils can cost more than $25, residents say; a rare bag of sugar can be twice that much.
Israel did resolve a waiver dispute with Amman in mid-October, soon after the U.S. letter, allowing aid trucks from Jordan to bring assistance directly into Gaza thorough northern and southern crossings. WFP has said the route continues “operating at low frequency with limited availability of trucks.”
U.S. demand #3: ‘End isolation of northern Gaza’
The isolation and deprivation in the north have only deepened since Oct. 13 despite U.S. pressure, according to aid groups and civilians trapped there.
Palestinians describe a doomsday situation, with tens of thousands forced from their homes by Israeli evacuation orders, food quickly running out and bodies piling up in the streets. Few supplies have reached the north’s last remaining hospitals — Kamal Adwan, al-Awda and Indonesian — and all three have been besieged and raided by Israeli forces.
The day after a World Health Organization convoy reached Kamal Adwan on Nov. 3, a strike hit the hospital’s third floor, according to Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the WHO, injuring six children and damaging a water tank. The Israeli military said the incident was under review.
A WHO team was allowed to transfer five patients from al-Awda Hospital to a facility in Gaza City, Tedros said, but “there was no permission to deliver supplies to the hospital, which puts it at risk to stop functioning.”
The letter from Washington asked Israel to reaffirm “that there will be no Israeli government policy of forced evacuation of civilians from northern to southern Gaza,” as reports began to emerge of a proposal known as the General’s Plan.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has refused to publicly disavow the plan, which calls for the military to take control of the north by starving out the civilian population and treating everyone who remains as combatants.
The Israel Defense Forces says it has been given no such orders and is focused on dismantling Hamas, but the ongoing military operation in the north appears to have much in common with the strategy.
On Monday, hours before the American deadline, three trucks reached Beit Hanoun, according to WFP, delivering food to people in the area for the first time in more than a month. COGAT said hundreds of packages of food and water were included. Soon after, WFP said, there were “reports of intense shelling” and Israeli forces surrounded the area, “ordering families to flee.”
Hudson reported from Washington. Claire Parker in Cairo, Loveday Morris in Berlin and Lior Soroka in Tel Aviv contributed to this report.